God is enough

Every time we say the words “Jesus Christ,” we are proclaiming a King who has a Kingdom. The Bible refers to it alternately as the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. Christ’s Kingdom is the rule and reign of a holy God, an “anointed one.” He is not just King of my heart or even King of the world. He is King of the universe. There is a cosmic reality far greater than us over which Christ rules.

His rule is complete.

The Kingdom of Heaven has an army. The Hebrew term usually translated as “hosts” in the Bible (as in, “Lord of Hosts”) more accurately means “army.” Ours is a warrior King who fights for us in the supernatural realm.

The one who is in charge of our army, who is fighting for our territory, who has dominion over our Kingdom, is a God of love, justice, mercy and peace. He can be trusted even in the battle because God is on the side of people. God loves people.

The King who is for us is with us.

He is a sovereign King. What does it mean when we say God is sovereign? We are saying, basically, that God is God. King of Kings! Lord of Lords! God Almighty. He is enough.

Here’s what the fact of God’s sovereignty means for you and me:

God has the power to do what he wants, where he wants, when he wants.

God has given himself one limit: he has chosen to let us come to him freely. Our Father has chosen to make our relationship with him a free choice. Free will is a mark of God’s sovereignty, not God’s limits.

God is not a bully. His decisions are compelled by love, not power (which means we are saved by love, not power). At the cross, we (humans) experienced the full extent of God’s love. Satan experienced the full extent of God’s power.

God does not control us; he empowers us. What he asks of us, he empowers us to do. That’s the point of the Holy Spirit. This is precisely why we seek the filling of the Holy Spirit.

God gives us the right to make decisions and our decisions matter. In fact, they have eternal consequences.

This is God’s sovereignty at work:God is compelled by love to exercise his power. Because he loves us, he uses his power to overcome every obstacle that threatens to keep his children from the Kingdom. He uses his power to fight for us and in the end, we are assured that this love — the love of a merciful, just God — wins.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, our Father is enough. All by himself, he is enough.

I went to church on a Saturday morning to meet a group of folks who wanted me to offer communion to their group. The first person I saw was one of the leaders. She drove right up next to me in the parking lot, rolled down her window, and said, “The dog ate the communion bread.” I thought she was joking, but she looked at me with dead seriousness and said, “No, really. How can a miniature dachshund need that much communion bread?”

What a powerful analogy for what has happened to so many people in this world. So many people I know are such good people, such intelligent people, but somewhere along the way, something happened. Either they got hurt by the church, or they found such hypocrisy among Christians that they couldn’t see the point of it. It is as if the dog has eaten their communion bread. Its as if Satan, or life, or fallen human beings – the world has stolen their right to be in communion with God. And the terrible result for too many of us is that we no longer trust God. We are suspicious that maybe he does not have our best interests at heart. We secretly wonder if, given an inch, God would try to make us walk a mile we don’t want to walk.

After all, if God is so good, why is life so hard?

This question baits the enemy of our souls. If he can get us to suspect God’s motives, he can yank us right down into misery and anger. All the anger, fear and loneliness we feel has a single root cause. It grows out of a basic distrust in God — in his power to provide, in his sovereignty, in his desire to do for us.

The antidote is in the names of God. We discover in his names the character of the One worthy of our trust. Yahweh: “I Am.” Emmanuel: “God With Us.”

Figuring out who God is is fundamental to how we relate to him. Thomas Merton says: “Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.”

Jeremiah Smith says this: There is nothing more important, no higher priority in your life, than for you to figure out who God is. It affects everything else in your life. You choose how to approach situations in your life based on your understanding of who God is and what He’s like.

In the quest to know him, where do we begin? I believe we begin where the Bible does, with the name that assures us God is enough. Whatever our sin, brokenness, problems, whatever else in our lives vies for our attention, God is enough.